Dodsworth (1936)
is famed German-born director William Wyler's classic romantic drama from
Samuel Goldwyn Productions, and distributed by United Artists. Scriptwriter
Sidney Howard wrote the screenplay based upon his 1934 stage adaptation
of Sinclair Lewis' 1929 novel of the same name. Luckily, Howard was able
to use his stage adaptation, with 14 different scenes, as the basis for
the film's screenplay.

This great, sensitively-directed, sophisticated
film with exceptional acting, and faithful to the source material, has
often been overlooked as one of the best films of the 1930s, and one of filmdom's
greatest love stories. The film's tagline stated: "Here is a Picture That
Was Marked For Greatness Before It Was Ever Screened!" Wyler had directed
another play (also produced by Goldwyn) that was adapted for the big screen
in the same year, These
Three (1936) - a heavily-bowdlerized adaptation of Lillian Hellman's
"The Children's Hour."

Director William Wyler and producer Samuel Goldwyn collaborated
on a total of nine films together, beginning with Barbary Coast (1935) (uncredited),
followed by Come and Get It (1936), These Three (1936), Dodsworth
(1936), Dead
End (1937), Wuthering
Heights (1939), The
Westerner (1940),
The Little Foxes (1941), and ending with the Best Picture-winning
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The cinematography
of Rudolph Mate made masterful use of intricately-composed or framed scenes,
many with deep-focus, recalling the works of Gregg Toland.

The undated story was a bittersweet,
maturely-intelligent drama about the disintegration and dissolution of
an older couple's troubled marriage during an extended grand tour of Europe.
The shallow, unsatisfied, age-fearing and restless wife (43 year-old Ruth
Chatterton, replacing Fay Bainter from the stage production, and in one
of her last US feature films before appearing in TV roles) was married
to a homespun, prosperous, self-made millionaire (Oscar-nominated Walter
Huston). She was unwilling to confront her middle-age while finding new
values and relationships in Europe (as an ugly American) and regarding
her older husband as boring and uncreative. She was seduced by the
aristocratic, charming and glamorous lifestyle she found on the Continent. She
flirted with and entered into various sexual affairs, causing her marriage
to ultimately fail.

With a realistic and complex depiction of the crumbling relationship,
the drama pushed the limits of the restrictive Production Code at
the time with a frank depiction of marital infidelities (off-screen mostly),
the couple's inevitable breakup, and his association with another woman
named Edith. Uncharacteristically, he was not 'punished' for walking out
on his marriage.

Before Mary Astor was chosen for the role of "other woman"
Edith, other actresses had been considered, including Walter Huston's real-life
wife Nan "Ninetta" Sunderland, unknown actress Rosalind Russell,
and silent-era beauty Dolores Costello (who had recently divorced John
Barrymore).

The film was shot entirely within LA sound studios, although
supplemented with background-projection shots of a number of authentic
locales, such as London, Paris, and Naples. Although not a major box-office
success at the time (due to the fact that it had lesser-known, older performers),
the subtle, sophisticated and serious film was critically-acclaimed. It
garnered seven
Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best
Actor (Walter Huston, recreating his earlier stage role, who should have
won the Oscar with his sensitive portrayal against winner Paul Muni for
The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)), Best Screenplay, Best Supporting
Actress (Maria Ouspenskaya, reprising her role from the earlier stage production,
and in her film debut), and Best Sound Recording, and won only one Oscar
for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration. It lost the Best Picture race
to The
Great Ziegfeld (1936),
a lengthy, less-impressive "musical" biography.

A British-television adaptation was aired
in 1950 in an episode of The Prudential
Family Playhouse, with Ruth Chatterton recreating her role of wife
Fran, Walter Abel as husband Sam, and a young Eva Marie Saint as Edith.
Various remakes have also been considered and announced, but never filmed:

a 1962 remake starring James Stewart, Lana Turner and
Ingrid Bergman, under the direction of George Roy Hill, and executive
produced by Gregory Peck

a 1977 version starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor

another 1970s version starring Henry Fonda

a
1982 TV movie starring producer/actor Gregory Peck

another remake
in 1991 planned with Harrison Ford, and produced by Peck

The Story

The film opens, to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," within
the executive office of
the Dodsworth Motor Company. The wealthy, self-made, hard-working, successful
auto tycoon and manufacturer Samuel Dodsworth (Oscar-nominated Walter Huston)
has his back to the camera, as he looks out over his sold factory. The
day's headline in the city's Zenith Times-Advocate states that his
company was sold to Union Motors: "Dodsworth Motors Sold to U.M.C.
- Samuel Dodsworth Closes Deal With Detroit Combine." An off-screen
office secretary asks: "Mr.
Dodsworth?" After the president and founder of the company responds: "Yes,"
she adds: "The men are ready." The camera tracks behind the beloved
Dodsworth as he walks among the workers, assembled to bid him goodbye
("I hate to see you go, Sam").

He is driven to his stately home, where his 40-ish wife
of 20 years Fran (Ruth Chatterton) is giving instructions to their maid
Mary (Beatrice Maude). When Fran asks how he feels about the sale of his
interest in the company (something she had convinced him to do), the good-natured,
comfortably reserved Sam responds: "How would any man feel who just
sold 20 years of his life?" Although looking sad and "mournful," he
anticipates what he has to look forward to - a trip to Europe with her
("I've
always wanted to see London and Paris"). Fran confides that she feels
liberated, vibrant, young and free, desiring more adventure and a "new
life" after twenty years of domesticity:

After 20 years of doing what was expected of us, we're free...I
want a new life, all over from the very beginning. A perfectly glorious,
free adventurous life.

Following his retirement in the "half-baked"
midwestern town of Zenith, his vain, selfish
and shallow wife finally states that she has finished putting in two
decades of social-climbing service (and pampered society life) to maintain
a home and family for her heavily career-focused, down-to-earth industrialist
husband. Now discontent to remain in the staid town with him, and with a strong
desire to be seen as worldlier and younger than she actually is (she claims
that everyone takes her for 32 or 30, almost 10 years younger than her
real age), she demands new and youthful experiences:

But have you ever thought what Zenith means to me? You
go down to the plant and deal in millions and have a marvelous time.
I go down to the kitchen and order dinner. Then there's the ladies' luncheon
and bridge, always the same ladies. Then dinner - the same people we
dined with last week. After dinner, poker for the men and women for the
women. There's talk of children and doctors and servants and the garden
club...I can't go on liking the same things forever and ever...I want
all the lovely things I've got a right to. In Europe, a woman of my age
is just getting to the point where men begin to take a serious interest
in her...After all, I've got brains and, thank heavens, I've still got
looks. Nobody takes me for over 32. 30 even. Oh Sammy, darling, I'm begging
for life. No, I'm not. I'm demanding it.

Foreshadowing what will happen, he agrees to "enjoy
life now if it kills me - and it probably will." It is revealed that
Sam was offered $100,000, after the sale, to be head of the production
of UMC's cars, but he turned it down. He tells his banker, his oldest and
closest friend Tubby Pearson (Harlan Briggs), that his life is about to
change:
"I'm out to make a new life for myself. I'm out to learn how to enjoy
my leisure, now I've retired." He repeats his wife's words about having
always done what is expected of him, but now has a desire to feel freer: "I'm
about to see some of the world I haven't seen and get a perspective on
the USA. I might get to know myself at the same time. I might even get
to know my wife."

Sam turns to his wife and delivers one of the film's most-remembered
and sincere compliments:

Did I remember to tell you today that I adore you?

The well-heeled couple are onboard the luxury liner the Queen
Mary bound
for Europe, and just before departing, they are given a surprise send-off
by their newly-married daughter Emily Dodsworth McKee (Kathryn Marlowe)
and her husband Harry McKee (John Payne), who have just flown in from the
Bahamas. Immediately after departure, Sam shows boyish enthusiasm and joy
for voyaging "at sea" with his wife, with no work interference,
exclaiming that they are on a second honeymoon:
"This is the happiest day of my life....This is the first time we've
ever really started out together as lovers?...I love you more than ever
now that I've got time for it."

Dressed awkwardly for dinner the first night in a formal
tuxedo while waiting for his wife at the ship's bar, suave,
debonair playboy Capt. Clyde Lockert (David Niven) introduces himself to
Sam. Over dry martinis at a table, Lockert flirtatiously offers compliments
to Sam's
"lovely" and attractive wife, although Sam is strangely unaware
and dismissive of the amorous attention.
Later on the ship's deck with the smooth Lockert, Fran appears ashamed
of her cultureless midwestern roots, although projects her insecurities
by denigrating fellow traveling Americans - calling them "dreadful" -
while Lockert adds that they are also "snobs." He offers to put
himself in charge of Fran's
"safety and sanity."

While dancing with Fran in the ballroom a few days later,
on the last night of the voyage before arrival, Lockert adds: "I'm
making great plans for us in London." Sam is childishly enthralled
by a view of a sea captain's navigational map and a view of Bishop's Light,
an English coastal lighthouse that he has observed, reminding him of his
English roots. He rushes into the ballroom, where he is oblivious to the
fact that Fran and Capt. Lockert are locked together in a slow dance. He
enthusiastically drags them onto the windy, cold deck to view his thrilling
discovery - a swinging beam of light across the night sky's horizon - although
they are unenthusiastic (vain Fran complains about the freezing cold and
the effects of the dampness on her wind-tossed hair). After he allows them
to return to the ballroom, he orders a drink to quiet his nerves. He hears
an off-screen, husky-voiced suggestion: